IDEA Testimonials

LehighHanson Uses IDEA Server to Support Global Auditors & Directors

Lehigh Hanson is global market leader in aggregates and one of the largest cement producers in the world. The company is part of the Heidelberg Cement Group with 2013 revenues of USD $18.8 billion. In this interview, Internal Auditor, Nina del Castillo explains how IDEA® Server allows Lehigh Hanson’s audit team spread across the globe to collaborative on data analysis projects.

What is Your Role at Lehigh Hanson?

As a data analyst I support our team of auditors and our director. Our company has three different ERPs and a lot of other disparate systems. My role is to work with IT to become familiar with all the systems and pull as much data as possible to ensure its accuracy.

How Long Have You Been Using IDEA®?

Our company started using IDEA® last year and since then we have about 30 auditors using the software across Europe, Asia, and North America. There are three data analysts and we all support our different teams.

Why Did You Choose IDEA®?

When we were looking at the different automated auditing packages that were available, one of the things that stood out about IDEA® was that it was very user friendly. This was helpful as we wanted to make things as easy as possible for our auditors to access the system.

Another reason we chose IDEA® was the pre-prepared tests available in SmartAnalyzer that really helped us to get started and as we became more familiar with scripting and applying it to our business we began to create more customized scripts.

Also, one of the reasons we love IDEA® is the import function that allows us to import data from multiple data sources. Once you develop the import definition, it is easily usable and accessible by others when necessary.

We work with 3 systems, all in different formats, with different header names, so with import definitions we can build in a consistent field name and run a standard macro on reports, without creating a separate macro for each system.

What are the Advantages of Collaborative Analytics?

One of the advantages of using IDEA® Server is that is allows us to easily collaborate across the pond with our European and Asian counterparts. It allows us to share our scripts, projects, as well as learn from each other’s past experiences.